I received in the mail a package from Roger Aplon, who is a participant in this year’s OW Chap Swap, and was pleasantly surprised.
He is a well educated writer from many places around the world, but makes his home now in San Diego, CA. I was drawn to the brilliantly red cover of Escapades which was designed by Jane Darroch Riley. For the life of me, I could not find a publisher on this little chap so one must assume he has produced this himself. It is a beautiful book for being self published with richly textured cardstock and crisp white pages laced with delicate typeface.
As a general rule I have never been one to enjoy prose poems, but Roger Aplon’s Escapades has changed all that. His work is energetic and quick paced, and this might come from the lack of punctuation, but it works. He is able to create small worlds and character sketches and tender moments that hurl the reader forward and leave them wanting just a bit more. He makes them linger with his implied ideas letting the reader wander in their own imagination about the events that transpired.
This 18 poem collection has so many gems that it is difficult to really single a few out, but I was most impressed with “I can’t seem to find the key to the door”:
“I caressed her ample breasts & recounted the time in Winnemucca when an Elk the size of a locomotive charged our jeep & tore right through the top with its perfect 14 point rack—Yes—& tonight is a mystery you’ll not forget for its lack of color or candor”
There is an uneasy sentiment and tenderness that doesn’t seem to leave me after reading “The truth of the matter”:
“she wandered from her home caught a bus a cold & married all in the same long night of which no one would speak or didn’t until today when she arrived at the station bag in hand & baby in arms to witness the feeding & migration of the great white birds of her youth”
Roger Aplon is able to capture such presence in a scene while somehow remaining detached as if he is merely an observer to events, a stereotypical fly on the wall who is anything but predictable. In “Each time he left her stranded”, he witnesses those unseen moments between a man and a woman:
“she’d cut a notch in her tongue & secrete the blade in her memory with the others / buzzing like hornets to startle the raider who wished again to strut his stuff / & she / no more thin-lipped servant whips out a serrated hand to slice the air between them leaving a bloody gash where the moon had been”
I find this to be an incredible collection of prose poems and Roger Aplon has great ability to dig into the strange reality of life and make it surreal, as often truths are.
Escapades is one little book of prose poems you don’t want to be without. You can contact him for purchase at: www.rogeraplon.com
